Alternative cars on horizon

It’s not every day you see someone load groceries into the hood of their car.

But for Theresa Gasper, it’s just another day driving a Tesla Model S, a fully electric battery-powered luxury car.

“If I go to Kroger I have to plan an extra 15 minutes,” said Gasper, president of Full Circle Development, and one of only three people in Montgomery County who has purchased a Tesla this year, according to Cross-Sell. “When people see the car, they want to see it and ask me all about it.”

Since the electric car’s motor takes up much less room than a traditional engine, the area under the hood serves as another storage compartment. That’s just one of the features of the Tesla that Gasper fancies. “I absolutely love it,” she said. “I used to think of driving as a necessary evil to get from place to place, but now I actually love driving.”

Gasper thinks Teslas, and other electric cars such as the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf, are the future of driving.

But local car dealers say that future remains a long ways off, as the country needs to develop more infrastructure to support electric and alternative fuel cars. However, the movement is picking up momentum, and the use of alternative fuels could lead to a new wave of development of charging and alternative fueling stations across the Dayton region.

It also could present opportunities for local auto parts suppliers, who employ thousands across the Dayton region.

On a full charge, which takes a little more than seven hours in Gasper’s garage from the 240-volt outlet she installed, the Tesla will go for 230 miles.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla has no dealerships in Dayton, and does not franchise. Gasper picked up her Model S at a service center near Columbus, after test driving it during a trip to New York City. Typically, to buy a Tesla in Dayton, customers order online, since all Teslas are made-to-order, said company spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson. Teslas start at $62,400, and the federal government provides a $7,500 tax credit.

Local mechanics aren’t certified to service the car, but Tesla offers a service plan to send mechanics to Tesla owners’ homes to fix any problems. If you don’t purchase the service plan, you have to drive your Tesla to the nearest service center.

Gasper said for her, the inability to make long trips isn’t an issue, since she drives between 10 and 50 miles per day, and prefers to fly for long-distance travel.

“I really think once the Tesla supercharging stations start springing up around the country, it’s going to be a real game changer,” she said.

By the end of the year Tesla plans to put two supercharging stations in Ohio, one on the Pennsylvania state line and one on the Michigan state line, Georgeson said. Tesla owners will be able to use the superchargers for free, but no other electric vehicles can use them.

Currently there are at least 11 public charging stations in the Dayton area, according to Dayton Business Journal research.

When plugged into a 120-volt outlet, a Tesla will charge at a rate of 10 miles per hour. At a 240-volt outlet, it goes up to 30 miles an hour. At a supercharging station, a Tesla can get a 200-mile charge in 30 minutes.

In Ohio it costs on average $1.22 to charge an electric vehicle to the equivalent amount of range achieved by one gallon of gas, which currently averages $3.40, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Jay Lawrence, general manager of Jeff Wyler Springfield Auto Mall, said hybrids are selling much better than electric cars right now. A top seller is the Toyota Prius, which combines an electric motor with a gas motor to achieve high gas mileage, but doesn’t leave a user dependent on an electric battery and a long wait to recharge.

“The (Chevy) Volt, it doesn’t move very well,” he said, referring to its sales pace. “It hasn’t really made the progress they were hoping, at least in the Midwest. In the future, somewhere, it’s going to happen. But in the short term, hybrids are really here for years yet.”

The Volt starts at $34,000, but also comes with the $7,500 federal tax credit.

John Voss, president of Voss Auto Network in Centerville, said customers still seem wary about electric cars.

“The concept is great, but the technology has not gotten to a point where the batteries go a long time,” he said.

“Electrics, even though there’s huge tax breaks and everything else, they’re still very soft,” said Larry Taylor, vice president.

He blamed the lack of re-charging infrastructure for the consumers’ lack of enthusiasm.

But while the Tesla, on the luxury end of the electric vehicle market, has been slow to pick up steam in Dayton, in other parts of the country it is getting its first tastes of real success, which seems to indicate a groundswell nationwide for electric vehicles. Tesla captured 12 percent of the California luxury car market in the first half of 2013, surpassing Porsche, Volvo, Cadillac, Jaguar and Land Rover, the California New Car Dealers Association reports.

CNG fuel beginning to snowball

Another alternative fuel system making waves in the Dayton area is the compressed natural gas vehicle.

Few dealerships sell cars manufactured to run on CNG, but many can be converted, including pick-up trucks, commercial trucks and vans.

The Dayton area has two CNG fueling stations in the works, and after they come online, the demand for CNG conversions will spike, or so hopes Kris Kyler, president of Fort Wayne, Indiana-based CNG Fuel Inc.

Kyler is developing a CNG fueling station at 2720 Needmore Road, which he expects to have up and running by the end of the year.

Vectren also is looking to build a public CNG fueling station at its existing facility in Fairborn at 1335 E. Dayton-Yellow Springs Road, but the project is currently stuck in litigation, said Chris Wimsatt, Fairborn’s economic development director.

It costs on average $10,000 to convert a vehicle to run on CNG, Kyler said. Because of that, fleet vehicles are the most common users of CNG since they can recoup the costs of the conversion more quickly. CNG costs about $2.20 per gallon right now, so the savings per mile can be significant for high mileage users.

Taylor hasn’t seen a lot of demand for cars to be converted to run on CNG, but he has sold some cars that owners took to get modified.

With no public stations yet in Dayton, Kyler said owners of CNG vehicles must be using home appliances.

“It’s the chicken and the egg problem,” he said. “There are a lot of people who would like to run on natural gas, but they’re not going out and buying natural gas vehicles because there’s no fueling station. Once you’re actually building a station, all of a sudden the interest starts popping up.”

Any mechanic can service a CNG vehicle for all needs except the natural gas component, which has to be serviced at the center that converted it. One such center in the Dayton region is Zoresco Truck Equipment at 301 Lawton Ave. in Monroe.

But Kyler said soon many dealerships will have technicians who can service CNG vehicles because the manufacturers will begin mandating it.

“I think in the next five years, you’re going to see a huge number of natural gas vehicles on the road,” Kyler said. “The snowball is really starting to roll right now.”